Tag: oppression

What will the Republicans controlling Tennessee’s statehouse do now that Nashville’s City Council has reinstated their expelled representative?

2:04 pm

Riot in Tennessee Statehouse
L to R, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson stand at
the podium, using a bullhorn to lead protester chants.

Bring a gun to a knife fight? When the Tennessee House first moved to expel two members, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, because of their participation in a riot that shut down the legislature on March 30, 2023, I noted the following:

Note that this gigantic Republican majority [75 to 24] reflects the wishes of the voters of Tennessee. If that majority fails to expel these three misbehaving Democrats, just because it is intimidated by the loud and almost violent actions of small minority, it will then prove not only how worthless it is, but that the voters themselves might not have the courage to stand up to these leftist thugs. As I say, the elected officials reflect the wishes of the voters. Weakness now in the statehouse will indicate weakness at all levels.

Subsequently the House did expel two of the three offending representatives (the third surviving by a single vote). In response, the Nashville city council moving to quickly reinstate its expelled representative, Justin Jones. It is expected that tomorrow the local county commission that Justin Pearson represented will reinstate him as well.

We have now reached the bottom line: What will the Republicans who control the statehouse in Tennessee by very wide margins do?

The immediate answer appears to be to capitulate.
» Read more

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Starship orbital test flight delayed one more week due to FAA delays

9:29 am

According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, the first orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy has been delayed again.

Starship launch trending towards near the end of third week of April

Musk had made it clear in an April 8th tweet the cause of this delay or any other delays:

Starship is ready for launch. Awaiting regulatory approval

Musk needs to be somewhat diplomatic as it will not help him to make federal bureaucrats his enemies. What he is doing here is subtly letting everyone know the sole cause of the delay, in order to press the FAA to get a move on, without saying so directly. He leaves that to others, such as myself, to say it instead.

I fear that the FAA is now demanding that it must look at the data from any wet dress rehearsal countdown, including the short engine burst that Superheavy will likely do at T-0, before it will issue the permit. If so, we could see more than a week delay. The launch should easily slip to late May if not later.

The absurdity of this is that it is utterly pointless for FAA bureaucrats to look at any of this data. What do they know? Nothing. If something was significantly wrong SpaceX engineers would know far sooner, and delay the launch themselves.

The delays seen in issuing this one launch license however give us a nice picture of what it will be like for the launch industry once the moratorium on heavy regulations by the FAA and other federal agencies expires on October 1, 2023. Expect a substantial slowdown in development and launches, with many of the new companies about to become operational instead going bankrupt in a replay of the destruction of Virgin Orbit by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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Pushback: Catholic college moves to end its need for any federal funding

3:00 pm

Belmont Abbey College

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Belmont Abbey College, a small private Catholic college in North Carolina, has begun a major fund-raising campaign to free itself and its students from any need to obtain what it calls “intrusive” federal funding.

According to their fund-raising website,

Without the ability to remain financially independent and secure, we place our faith-based practices at risk from a federal government both increasingly intrusive to private institutions and increasingly hostile to faith. The mission of Belmont Abbey College is rooted in a desire to fill society with graduates prepared to restore the culture for the greater glory of God and create a world where charity and goodness thrive.

Their goal is to raise $55 million.
» Read more

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Report recommends Congress allow full regulation of commercial human spaceflight

12:10 pm

The modern instruction manual for America
The modern instruction manual for America

A new report by the RAND corporation has recommended that Congress allow the moratorium on full regulation of commercial human spaceflight, established by the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 and extended several times, to expire on October 1, 2023.

That recommendation came despite a lack of progress on voluntary standards and key industry metrics. While standards development organizations like ASTM International and ISO have published 20 standards related to commercial spaceflight, the RAND report noted that “companies have yet to clearly or consistently adopt them in a manner that can be confirmed or verified publicly.” A diversity of technical approaches also hinders the development and implementation of standards.

The report also found that while the FAA had developed key industry indicators to assess readiness for adopting safety regulations, there were no goals for those indicators to determine when it was time to implement regulations. “It is, therefore, difficult to assess whether there has been progress toward meeting key industry metrics when there are not clear targets that could be met,” the report concluded.

Despite that lack of progress on standards or metrics, the RAND report nonetheless concluded that allowing the learning period to expire this year was the best approach. Doing so, it argued, would allow FAA and industry to start the process of developing safety regulations in a gradual manner and avoid a rush to regulate imposed by Congress should a high-profile accident take place while the learning period is still in effect.

It also recommended additional resources for the FAA to support that regulatory process, but did not quantify an increase in the budget for or personnel assigned to its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the crushing fundamentals of all government regulation. » Read more

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Pushback: University president forced out because she fired professor for including Muhammad images in classwork

1:00 pm

Mohammad meeting Gabriel
One of the two works of art, “Mohammed receiving revelation
from the angel Gabriel,” that got Prater fired.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The president of Hamline University in Minnesota, Fayneese Miller, has now announced her early retirement after the school’s faculty demanded her resignation in January when she dismissed a professor for showing images of Muhammad as part of an art class.

That teacher, Erika Lopez Prater, immediately sued.

The lawsuit, which Lopez Prater’s lawyers said on Tuesday will soon be filed in court, reiterated the professor’s previous statement that she had offered warnings before showing the image – including in the syllabus and immediately before showing the image – and had volunteered to work with students uncomfortable with viewing the depictions.

The suit has alleged the university subjected Lopez Prater to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation. “Among other things, Hamline, through its administration, has referred to Dr Lopez Prater’s actions as ‘undeniably Islamophobic,’” her attorneys said in a statement.

» Read more

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Starship now stacked on launchpad

9:45 am

Starship stacked on top of Superheavy

In preparation for a final wet dress rehearsal countdown followed by its first launch, Starship has now been stacked on top of Superheavy at SpaceX’s launchpad at Boca Chica, Texas.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from a short video Elon Musk posted on Twitter. SpaceX had also tweeted that its “Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week [April 10-11] followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval.”

At this time the FAA has still not issued the launch license. By announcing its plan to launch the week of April 17th, Musk and SpaceX puts pressure the government bureaucracy to get a move on.

23 comments

Tennessee House expels two of three representatives who aided rioters

5:56 pm

The Tennessee House today successfully voted to expel two of the three Democrat representatives who aided the gun control rioters attempting to take over the statehouse on March 30, 2023.

This is an update of my blacklist column yesterday. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled, while the vote to expel Gloria Johnson fell one vote short.

Both representatives could be reappointed to their seats, and can also run in the special election to fill the now-empty seats. Both made it clear before the vote that they do not consider anything they did was wrong, and intend to return.

All power to them. They just better realize that using a bullhorn to take over the statehouse, when they have not been given the floor to speak, is wrong, and if they do it again they will be expelled again.

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Pushback: Missouri school libraries sue to keep porno on their shelves; Missouri lawmakers zero out library budget

4:57 pm

Cody Smith
Missouri House Republican Cody Smith

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In 2022 the Missouri legislature passed a law that made it illegal to provide any student with books containing images “‘showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,’ ‘sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,’ or showing human genitals.” The aim of the law was to put reasonable limits on the kind of material available in school libraries, and was passed in response to the recent nationwide effort by teachers and librarians to include such smut in these places.

A normal person’s response should be, “Gee, why do we need a law? What sane adult would ever give this stuff to kids? Isn’t that why we have a movie rating system?” A normal person would also note that anyone who did want to distribute this kind of porno to kids is really nothing more than a pedophile.

Well, it looks like the Missouri Association of School Librarians, the Missouri Library Association, and the ACLU are all pedophiles, when you get right down to it. These organizations immediately banded together to sue to overturn the law. They want to give kids porno.

On March 28, 2023 the Missouri House responded in turn to these pedophiles by passing a budget that cuts the entire $4.5 million budget for all public libraries. The cut was put forth by the House budget chairman Cody Smith, who said this:
» Read more

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Global warming scientists whine about India defunding climate research center

11:29 am

According to this Nature article, scientists worldwide are outraged by the decision of the Modi government in India to suspend all foreign funding to its Centre for Policy Research (CPR) for the next 180 days.

Why might the Modi government have done this? First, this is how Nature describes CPR’s work:

The CPR conducts research into public policy in India, including climate change, social and economic policy, governance and infrastructure. Last year it received about three-quarters of its grant funding from influential global organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank. Its domestic researchers have contributed to high-profile international studies such as the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

…The CPR “has played an enormously important role in informing public policy debate in India and internationally”, says Frank Jotzo, an environmental economist at the Australian National University in Canberra. Jotzo says that CPR, established in 1973, has a long and esteemed history in providing objective and honest analysis of government policy in India, and has at times criticized Indian government policy and plans. “That is invariably the case with any independent, impartial think tank or organization anywhere in the world,” he says. [emphasis mine]

In other words, CPR routinely advocates leftist policy positions. When a leftwing government is in power, its policy papers will glow with pride about the achievements of government. When a rightwing government is in power — such as the Modi administration — its policy papers will be suddenly “objective and honest” and hard-hitting, attacking the government for daring to challenge its assumptions about “climate change, social and economic policy, governance and infrastructure.”

This is typical political garbage from Nature and the leftist culture it routinely represents. CPR appears to have violated Indian law with its foreign funding, using the “funds for purposes other than those permitted under its licence.” Moreover, Modi is the elected head of India’s government. CPR works for him and the Indian public who elected him. If he decides this agency should be defunded, then so be it. For far too long leftists worldwide have claimed a permanent right to government funds. This needs to stop, and it is refreshing to see the Modi government is willing to take action in this regard.

If only Republicans in America has as much courage.

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Pushback: Republicans move to expel Democrats who gave aid to rioters in Tennessee statehouse

12:59 pm

Riot in Tennessee Statehouse
L to R, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson stand at
the podium, using a bullhorn to lead protester chants.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Wasting no time following the riot by protesters that invaded the Tennessee statehouse on March 30, 2023, Republican state legislators have removed from all committees the Democratic Party legislators who gave aid to rioters and are now moving to have them expelled from office.

Resolutions have been filed against Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson after they led chants from the House floor with supporters in the gallery last Thursday. The resolution declared that the three had participated in “disorderly behavior” and “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”

Republican Reps. Bud Hulsey, Gino Bulso, and Andrew Farmer filed the resolutions. They successfully requested Monday that the House expedite the process and vote on the resolutions Thursday.

Not surprisingly, the three legislators threatened with expulsion claimed they did nothing wrong, even though all three shared a bullhorn in the chamber (as shown in the picture above), leading chants for the demonstrators. Justin Pearson proudly touted what he did in a tweet:
» Read more

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Shetland Spaceport now faces same regulatory hurdles that destroyed Virgin Orbit

9:37 am

The new Shetland spaceport, Saxavord, is right now attempting to get launch approvals from United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the same agency that dithered for six months approving a Virgin Orbit launch, thus causing the bankruptcy of that company.

According to Saxavord’s CEO, the spaceport has two launches aiming to launch before the end of this year, assuming the CAA can get its act together and give its approval. This quote however is worrisom:

The Saxavord spaceport says it is “still on track” to receive its necessary licences from the sector’s regulator before the summer. This relates to applications to the Civil Aviation Authority for range and spaceport licences.

Meanwhile SaxaVord CEO Frank Strang said the company is also on track for two rocket launches this year – “albeit they have moved slightly to the right”. [emphasis mine]

The delays could be coming from the rocket companies themselves. One of those companies is the German startup, Rocket Factory Augsburg, which has leased exclusive use of one launchsite. The other is the American startup ABL, which has had one launch attempt from the U.S. that failed.

Based on the CAA’s track record however the delays are just as likely coming from it. The CAA began this licensing process in November 2022, and is not done yet six months later.

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Judges expand hiring boycott of elite law colleges that allow violent protests and censorship

12:24 pm

Judge James Ho
Judge James Ho

Two federal judges have now expanded their hiring boycott to include Stanford Law School along with Yale Law School because the administrators at both schools have refused to punish violent student protesters who acted to silence others.

The judges, James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Elizabeth Branch, a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, will hire no graduates from these schools, thus reducing the whole reason for going there. Law students graduate hoping this diploma will get them jobs working for important judges, an early step to becoming a judge themselves.

The question that Ho and Branch raise, however, is whether any judge would want to hire any students from these particular schools. As Judge Ho noted in a speech on April 1st at the annual meeting of the Texas Review of Law & Politics.
» Read more

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FAA issues travel advisory for Boca Chica for April 10, 2023 Starship launch

10:30 am

Though the FAA has not yet issued the launch license to SpaceX, allowing it to do the first orbital launch test of its Superheavy/Starship rocket, the agency today did issue a travel advisory for the Boca Chica area for April 10-11, 2023, in connection with this launch.

The FAA advisory is here. Scroll down to see the space activities section, which includes this information:

SPACEX STARSHIP SUPERHEAVY BOCA CHICA, TX
PRIMARY: 04/10/23 1310-1745Z
BACKUP(S): 04/11-12/23 1310-1745Z

Based on this information, we should expect the FAA launch license to be publicly announced any moment.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

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Pushback: University will hire no one who supports “critical race theory”

11:41 am

SouthernWesleyan University: still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization
Still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization

Bring a gun to a knife fight: According to the president of Southern Wesleyan University, it refuses to hire anyone who supports “critical race theory”, and instead seeks out scholars who support the basic tenets of Christianity and western civilization.

[A]s Southern Wesleyan University President Bill Barker enters his eighth month at the helm of the private, four-year institution, he said he has made it a priority to educate critically on critical race theory. … “I made it very clear where SWU stands on critical race theory, and we made it very clear in our hiring processes,” Barker said in a Zoom interview with The College Fix. “Personnel is policy.”

“We’re not hiring people – and I’ve been clear since I came here and the Board of Trustees has supported this – who endorse critical race theory. We will have the courage to let faculty or staff go if they are teaching critical race theory.” Barker took the helm of the South Carolina-based campus in July 2022.

Barker’s policy is more than words. » Read more

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NASA policy for naming missions now discourages honoring individuals

9:39 am

In a change apparently brought about by the fake and bigoted slanders against James Webb, who led NASA brilliantly for almost the entire 1960s space race and was thus honored by NASA when it named the James Webb Space Telescope after him, NASA has now changed its policy for naming missions in order to discourage any future missions to be named after individuals.

According to the new policy, a NASA historian must be involved, and “The historical analysis led by [the naming committee] will include a human capital review to ensure diversity, unity, inclusion, and inspiration are considered.” The policy also states:

Where possible, limit the practice of naming projects, missions, instruments, etc., after individuals. (a) Instead use the theme of unity, inspiration, or the accomplishments of a person as the primary criterion for a project or mission name. (b) Except in extraordinary circumstances will names of individuals be considered and, only in more rare circumstances, may individuals who are still living receive consideration. (c) The use of an individual’s name should be based on their contributions to America, NASA, and humanity, and therefore be so extraordinary that any other form of recognition by the Agency would be considered inadequate. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase is typical jargon used by the “diversity, unity, inclusion” crowd, and indicates that any past great American who did something great for America but not for the rest of the world, will be considered unqualified. Thus, do not expect any missions to be ever named after our Founding Fathers, or other great Americans. Instead, I expect any individuals who get honored in the future will be chosen in order to push “diversity, unity, inclusion”.

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NASA names four astronauts to fly on first manned Artemis mission around Moon

9:23 am

NASA today named the four astronauts who will fly on its Artemis-2 in a 10-day mission around the Moon, launched on SLS’s second launch in an Orion capsule and tentatively scheduled for late 2024.

The crew assignments are as follows: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, and Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen. They will work as a team to execute an ambitious set of demonstrations during the flight test.

The approximately 10-day Artemis II flight test will launch on the agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, prove the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.

The flight, set to build upon the successful uncrewed Artemis I mission completed in December, will set the stage for the first woman and first person of color on the Moon through the Artemis program, paving the way for future for long-term human exploration missions to the Moon, and eventually Mars. This is the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate some important facts. First, this first manned flight of Orion will also be the first that will use the capsule’s life-support systems, which were not included the first flight around the Moon in December. Thus, these four humans are essentially guinea pigs for this engineering. Seems such a plan should have been questioned by NASA’S corrupt safety panel, but then, it is corrupt, and never seems to have much problem with unsafe practices done by NASA itself. Instead, it spends a lot of time making up problems for SpaceX and missing problems at Boeing and NASA.

Second, note NASA’s emphasis on race and sex for the first landing on the Artemis-3 mission. Note too that Artemis-2 crew also includes a black and a woman. Though the press release wisely and correctly makes no mention of race when describing the four astronauts, it does tout the achievements of Christina Koch as a woman, not as a person.

Don’t get me wrong. It is good that a black and a woman are flying to the Moon. It just appears very clear that NASA now has a firm quota system, requiring one of each for every mission.

Finally, there is something not mentioned in the press release or on the Artemis-2 webpage that is very telling. Neither says anything about a launch date, which NASA had previously announced as November 2024. I have been predicting from the beginning that this date is a fantasy. It now appears NASA realizes it but is not yet ready to admit it publicly.

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Midnight repost: The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

1:01 am

The indictment of Donald Trump this week on bogus charges by a local New York Democratic Party machine politician, done for entirely political reasons, once again illustrates the ugliness of that party. Seems therefore appropriate to repost this August 2022 essay. The only thing that has changed since then an increase in the aggressive, vicious, and violent nature of the Democrats and their allies in the various LBGQTBIBOC etc queer and bigoted identity movements. They are acting with ever greater impunity, while we certainly have not seen any clear evidence that the decent population of the United States has risen up in outrage. Instead, it increasingly appears they are bowing their heads in fear, and letting the bullies win.

It also appears that even if decent Americans finally now step up with outrage, it will be too little too late. For far too long they slept, and now they reap the whirlwind.

The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the Trump raid finally wake Americans up?

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.
» Read more

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Virgin Orbit shuts down

5:12 pm

Unable to secure new funding, the managers of Virgin Orbit have shuttered the company, possibly forever.

Virgin Orbit is ceasing operations “for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline, CEO Dan Hart told employees during an all-hands meeting Thursday afternoon. The company will lay off nearly all of its workforce. “Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Hart said, according to audio of the 5 p.m. ET meeting obtained by CNBC.

The layoffs include all but 100 positions, about 85% of its workforce.

The company was killed because the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) took an extra six months approving a launch license, during which the company could launch nothing and thus make no money. Lacking revenue, it ran out of cash. If the company goes into bankruptcy, this detail is most intriguing:

Branson has first priority over Virgin Orbit’s assets, as the company raised $60 million in debt from the investment arm of Virgin Group.

In other words, Branson will be able to walk off with everything, and even resurrect the company as his own, for pennies on the dollar. If he does, I guarantee our bankrupt mainstream press will shower him with praise, calling him a hero.

8 comments

H3 failure delays Japan’s entire space program

9:53 am

According to one official of Japan’s space agency JAXA, the failure of the first launch of its new H3 rocket in early March now threatens the schedule of much of Japan’s entire space program, even those missions being launched on the older H2A rocket.

The investigation into the launch failure, when the upper stage of the H3 rocket failed to ignite, remains unfinished with no word when it will be completed.

The H3 upper stage uses an engine designated LE-5B-3 developed by MHI [Mitsubishi Heavy Industries] and similar to the LE-5B engine used on the existing H-2A rocket. That is putting launches of the H-2A on hold while the investigation continues.

That may delay the upcoming launch of two science missions sharing an H-2A. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), an X-ray astronomy spacecraft, and the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), a lunar lander, were scheduled to launch together as soon as May on an H-2A.

The article notes that XRISM replaces a 2016 Japanese X-ray telescope that failed immediately after launch. That failure then was bad, but just as bad is the seven years it has taken JAXA to have a replacement ready.

The H3 failure also threatens a JAXA Mars mission scheduled for launch in 2024, during the next launch window to Mars.

Japan’s space program more and more resembles Russia’s. It is controlled entirely by the government, which it appears does not allow competition within Japan, as all major rocket work is apparently confined to Mitsubishi. There have been unending quality control problems, within many probes as well as in the development of both the H3 and the Epsilon rockets. And the pace of operations is slow, much slower than other nations or companies.

It seems a major reform is needed, and it should start with Japanese government officials reading Capitalism in Space. They need to open up competition and release their space program from the control of JAXA, especially because JAXA is not doing a very good job. Like NASA, it would be better if JAXA stopped being a designer and builder, and become merely a customer obtaining products from many different competing private companies.

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In U.S. sales of dumb phones are up

4:00 pm

It appears that American users of mobile phones are shifting every so slightly away from smart phones, with sales of simple flip-phones lacking a screen rising in the past year.

In the U.S., feature flip phone sales were up in 2022 for HMD Global, with tens of thousands sold each month. At the same time, HMD’s global feature phone sales were down, according to the company.

In 2022, almost 80% of feature phone sales in 2022 came from the Middle East, Africa and India, according to Counterpoint Research. But some see that number shifting, as a contingency of young people in the U.S. revert back to dumb or minimalist phones. “In North America, the market for dumb phones is pretty much flatlined,” said Moorhead. “But I could see it getting up to 5% increase in the next five years if nothing else, based on the public health concerns that are out there.”

Companies like Punkt and Light are catering to the trend, selling devices geared toward those with a desire to spend less time on their phones and social media. On YouTube, you will find a slew of influencers touting these phones.

It is not clear if this is a real trend, or merely a bit of press release salesmanship by HMD and others. If it is however I think it is a good trend. Smart phones do very little to make people smarter. Instead, they foster a shallow thinking process focused on emotion. The more people who get away from them the better.

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